


apollo's curse

by straddling_the_atmosphere



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, M/M, Old Gods, Prophecy, in which james flint is a sea god and john silver is cassandra
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-14 09:35:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14133309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/straddling_the_atmosphere/pseuds/straddling_the_atmosphere
Summary: John Silver is just a man. A man with no past, no name. A man with a tongue that can change the tides of war.But James Flint? James Flint is no man.--In which Flint is a god of the sea with amnesia, and John Silver believes in him so deeply that Flint begins to remember again.





	apollo's curse

**Author's Note:**

  * For [maricolous](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maricolous/gifts).



> happy birthday zoe! i posted this on tumblr but i added like two new chunks of paragraphs here. shows me right for posting before being completely done

Gods need to be worshipped to survive-–it is a fact every god knows. In the days of old when sacrifices were made, when altars stood tall and gleaming in the sun, the gods prospered. This was in the days when man believed in all gods. A god for harvest, a god for wind. A goddess for homestead and a goddess of war. A god of the sea.

Gods walked among humankind sometimes. It wasn’t rare for them to sire golden-skinned, beautiful children, who would win wars and love too fiercely for any mortal. Who would all die tragic deaths.

But time passes. People begin to believe less. Gods begin to fade, or cause trouble, or hide. And sometimes, a god could change the destiny of something thought to be pre-ordained by the fates, and it was this that made the other gods banish him. And time keeps moving as it is wont to do. Humans move on and their memories are fickle little things. They forget.

But the gods are still there. Waiting.

* * *

“I see him, Billy,” John Silver says, voice feverish and eyes wild and manic. He squeezes an eel with his hand, feeling the slip-slide of the slime as it oozed between his fingers. His stomach is tight from hunger and his throat hurts. “I am clear-headed with him.”

Silver doesn’t notice the disbelieving look Billy throws him, or the way a new wariness creeps onto his expression when he looks at him. He doesn’t notice much of anything in his fervor, tongue darting out to wet parched, cracked lips. The taste of iron fills his mouth.

It is day four without water. It is day four without wind. An hour ago, Silver watched as Flint stood at the bow of the ship, his shoulders still so broad, even with all the weight they’d lost. His hands steady on the rail, his eyes closed. A titan. The sea lapped at the hull, like it was trying to touch him.

Silver stares at his own hands, the nails cracked, eel slick covering fingers. His rings sit at a pile on the table, too loose to fit. He thinks of Flint strapping himself into the wheel, of the wind and rain lashing down on them. He thinks of--loss. Water choking him. Of survival. Of how they shouldn’t have.

“I think he summoned it,” he tells Billy. “I think-–we are all pawns in whatever this is that he's created. We are all lesser beings in a greater game.”

Billy shakes his head, says, “You should have my water ration,” and leaves the room.

* * *

When Silver looks at Flint, he always forgets that he isn’t a tall man. Something about him seems bigger, like his shadow looms taller than everyone around him. When he speaks, you listen. His eyes flash foam green like the sea on a blisteringly sunny day, and his teeth are startlingly white against the sunset-orange of his beard, and Silver is delirious with something he can’t name, something in him that wants Flint to  _look_  at him.

Even now, cheeks gaunt and wrists thin and delicate, Flint looks unbreakable. Silver feels like a wave crashing onto a rocky crag, mutilating himself on the sharp cracks with the desire for Flint to see him.

* * *

“It means something, Captain,” Silver says, the two of them in the captain’s cabin, stomachs filled with shark and a steady breeze cooling the air. The ship moves with the waves, a steady rolling motion that makes Silver want to close his eyes and weep.

Flint is looking him in the eye, and Silver wants to swim in the grey-green he sees there. It looks shadowed and cool, unlike the heat prickling his skin.

“Means what, Silver?” Flint asks tiredly.

“You-–the storm! The wind!”

Flint gives him an alarmed look. “Do you need to lie down?”

“ _No_ ,” Silver says waspishly, but when he tries to stand he nearly stumbles, sweat beading at the corner of his temples. The pain he’s been ignoring in his leg comes back with a vengeance now that he’s eaten something, and he closes his eyes.

“Rest.” Flint’s tone brooks no argument, and he nods to the bed. “I’ll wake you when we land.”

Silver settles gingerly on the bed and watches as Flint moves about the cabin, watches the easy way he shifts his body to the slow moving rhythm of the waves. He’s never seen Flint unbalanced, he realizes. Flint moves like the ocean itself, unpredictable and chaotically graceful. His hands are never still, as ever-moving as the tide.

* * *

High, high in the sky, someone watches. The gods gaze upon a world that has moved on so quickly. A world that doesn’t believe in them anymore. They see their own.

There are certain humans marked for greatness. Perhaps they have some sort of godblood in them, distant and watered down. There are men that bring war so greatly, blood in their mouths and on their teeth, that it seems they must have Ares or Maher or Macha as ancestor. There are women with sharp eyes and cunning smiles who must have Athena, Anansi, or Isis.

Some, who don’t know of their past at all. Who speak lies and people will listen. Who speak truths and people won’t. Prophecy has never been made for those who wish for peace.

They see a boy and they see a trickster. They see one of their own near him. They see a god who has forgotten, who has been made to forget. They see the slow, steady beginnings of worship.

And they are afraid.

* * *

He could blame it on the fever. He could. On Madi’s kind eyes, her dry palm against his own as he’d bit back screams when her people had applied the poultice to his skin. On his ragged breath, the tears he could feel dripping down his face.

“I’m afraid,” he’d told her, and he’d closed his eyes when she had pressed her hand to his around that wooden pole. “Of losing myself beside him.”

He is afraid. There is something about Flint that is irresistible, pulling him deeper and deeper into the darkness. He remembers Madi’s concerned dark eyes, and then nothing–just pain and fever and agony. When he’d come to, his wound had looked better, but Madi had looked grave.

“We almost had to take more off,” she says to him and Silver swallows. Her eyes gleam and Silver reaches out, touches her soft fingers to his and closes his eyes. He tethers himself in her steady hands.

* * *

_He will remember soon,_  someone says, formless, voiceless.  _He grows stronger._

Another shadow replies,  _He should not be able to do what he is doing._

They say that the gods don’t have bodies when they are together. That taking a form is for mortal benefit. That what they look like is power and light and electricity in one indescribable shape. They smell like earth, or air, or ozone. They smell like salt and sea.

_We have not had a god of the tides for a long time._

_Perhaps, it is time to let him come back._

* * *

“I told Billy I thought you had conjured the storm,” Silver tells Flint, watching him dig. Flint pauses and glances at him, bewildered.

“I was hungry, and tired, and thirsty,” Silver continues thoughtfully. “Those are all excuses I suppose. I believe it, though.”

“ _Silver–-”_

“None of us should have survived it. You know this to be true, Captain. That storm was a ship killer.”

Flint is quiet, staring at the half covered cache.

“I think you might be some kind of god.”

An expression flickers on Flint’s face and he grimaces. “Are you sure you aren’t still ill?”

Silver scowls. “I’m clear-headed. I’m always clear-headed when it comes to you.”

Flint’s shoulders loosen and he sighs, resigned to this particular talk. “Alright,” he says conversationally. “Which god might I be then?”

“God of the sea,” Silver says immediately.

Flint shakes his head. “What god of the sea sunburns? Am I so poorly made as that?”

“Perhaps whoever banished you here didn’t want you to find the sea again.”

He rolls his eyes. “There are many gods of the sea. Which one am I?” It’s clear he’s only humoring Silver and that makes him bristle.

“Maybe you’re not a god,” Silver says. “Maybe a mermaid.”

“A mermaid.”

“A siren,” Silver corrects. “Come to lure us all into wine-dark sea.”

Flint studies him. “I didn’t know you’d read the Odyssey.”

“There are many things you don’t know about me.”

Flint huffs softly and begins to dig again. “I know,” is all he says.

* * *

Silver tells Madi, "I think he can control the sea," and Madi at first looks at him with alarm, and then, with humor. He tells her, "He needs me," and, "I need him."

Madi says, "You are your own man without him," and, "If I were a no-good pirate, I'd follow you," and she believes in him but she doesn't believe his words. All Silver has are his words, and he feels wild and out of control.

"He  _made_ this happen--don't you understand?" he tells Billy, who furrows his brows. They believe him, the pirate king, but not with this. Never with this. The words turn to ash on his tongue.

Silver watches Flint all the time, which means he knows Flint watches him, but only half the time. The other half, he is watching the men, and the sea. He sees him perform feats unheard all because Silver asks, and he wants to kneel at his feet, to ask him  _why_ and  _how_ and  _I know what you are, how can you not know who you are?_

Foresight is a gift from the gods, but in their fear, a curse too. Everyone will believe his lies but never the truth.

* * *

"Do you believe me now?” Silver asks with wild eyes and Flint looks at him and _looks_ , taking in his thunderstorm eyes and his hair like spilled ink, tangled down his shoulders, his bright, sharp teeth. He feels electric, his breathing hard, and around them, the sea moves, frothy waves battering against the sides of their sailboat.

It never touches them, shying away just before. They are dry and the ocean is violent, as ever matching Flint’s mood.

“Maybe,” he says. Silver makes a sound, low and furious. They had been on reconnaissance. Meetings with spies in Nassau. Ever since the battle on Maroon Island there had been a bit of a lull, but now they’re far away from the Walrus after their meeting had been cut short by British soldiers storming their hideout. Flint, in his fury, had snarled something low and unintelligible, and Silver’s heart had pounded _yes, yes, yes_ as a gust of wind from the chaotic sea had blown hard around them, kicking up sand until all they could hear were muffled yells and the British soldiers’ horses screaming, high and piercing in the air.

So now they are on a small boat. It had appeared out of nowhere, like Charon’s fucking rowboat over the Styx.  _You need payment to cross,_  Silver imagines Flint saying, looking at him with those clear green eyes, teeth bared to the gleaming bone.

 _Don’t you see?_   Silver would say.  _I’ve already given you payment._  And he thinks of his leg tossed into the deep blue water, and he thinks of his heart, bloody and still beating, in his palms.

Silver closes his eyes and shudders, avoids that knowing gaze. Flint can flay him apart with that look. There’s a hand on his chin, on his cheek, and Silver opens his eyes when the overwhelming smell of salt and seawater fill his nose. In all the time Silver has known him, Flint has always smelled like the ocean.

“If I am…what you say I am…” Flint says softly, his thumb hot on Silver’s jaw. “Then what are you to me?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Silver asks weakly, his heart pounding. Water sprays his cheeks and it feels like a kiss. He wets his lips, the scorching heat of Flint’s eyes dropping to his mouth.

He leans forward and Flint meets him there, two waves colliding where the ocean currents change. Flint surges against him, lips soft and beard rough on Silver’s skin, and he curls his fingers tightly in Flint’s shirt, holding onto him to survive.

Kissing Flint is what he thinks drowning would feel like. That bone-tingling fear that fades into something sweet, something soft. Something you want to give yourself to.

And so Silver does.

* * *

A god needs to be worshipped to have power. In the years since the gods ran wild, they were worshipped less and less, until they fades from the mortal realm and back to their own. They still watch, of course, but they do not have the power to change humankind anymore. Their mastery of even earthly things has faded.

But a worshipped god…that is a mighty thing indeed. Flint’s memory had gone-–human, he’d been, with human memories, and human lives. But what was it they used to say about him? When Hennessey would say,  _There is something dark in all men, but in you it is wilder, deeper. I fear what it could do._  When Thomas would touch his jaw, cradling it in his steady palm and whisper, _Your heart beats like the ocean waves. Loving you is like swimming out into a storm._  When Miranda would gaze at him, face twisted with their shared grief, and tell him, _You come and go like the tides, James. I have lost one of you–-I cannot lose the other._

When Silver stared at him and said,  _You conjured us into a storm. The ocean saved me from drowning because you wouldn’t let it take me. No one believes me, but I know, I know what you are._  And he couldn’t kneel but he had already given a leg, already given his heart, already had thrown himself into a war for him, and what could a god do in the face of that belief except find something inside himself that awakens?

Gods demand blood, and Silver had given it to him--with the loss of his leg, the blood on his face-- _I didn't feel it then, but, oh, do I feel it now._ With the taste of iron on his teeth as Flint had licked into his mouth, his heart a fragile, beating thing under the palm of his hand.  _His,_ something fierce and godly inside him had snarled, shaken off its rusted chains and opened its whirlpool eyes.  _Mine,_ he'd thought again, and the ocean around them breathed.

* * *

“They say that he’s a god,” a man says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “That Long John Silver summoned him and holds his leash. They say he can create hurricanes an’ thunderstorms.”

“Jesus Christ, Ned, how drunk are you?” Another man asks, snickering into his rum. The door to the tavern opens, then, though nobody pays it any mind. A dark-haired figure makes his way to the bar, and orders himself a drink. He listens, quiet.

“I’m serious!” he insists. “Why else hasn’t he died? Captain Flint should’a been dead long ago. Any normal man would’ve. Makes sense that he’d be a god.”

“Maybe in your addled fuckin’ mind, Ned-–”

“Don’t act like you ain’t terrified every time you hear the stories!”  
  
“Doesn’t explain how he’s been here ‘fore Long John Silver. How do you explain that?”

The man at the bar stands up and drags his leg along the ground. It is a distinctive screech, metal on wood, and Ned and his companions freeze. The man leans against the edge of their table, smirking.

“I’ll tell you how it can be explained,” he says, blue eyes glittering in the darkness of the tavern. He taps his fingers on the rim of Ned’s drink, a rhythmic clicking noise. “Sometimes a god needs a bit of a push.” His lips curve into a smirk under the darkness of his beard. “Sometimes, they just need to be _woken up.”_

Outside the tavern, thunder rumbles, the sky as grey as Silver’s eyes. And the foam-green, blood-tipped sea churns.

**Author's Note:**

> let me know what u think! 
> 
> edit: the lovely marginson on tumblr made some SWEET COVERS FOR THIS AND I AM YELLING. CHECK THEM OUT [HERE](https://marginson.tumblr.com/post/172379549703/prophecy-has-never-been-made-for-those-who-wish)


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